A television set has become today a basic ingredient in everyday living and it is rare to find a home today which does not have at least one television set. With this wide audience available to television network companies and the attendant advertising revenue source, the use of commercial messages during the broadcasting of program material is increasing with greater and greater frequency so that a substantial portion of the entertainment program material is being preempted by commercial messages for advertising purposes. While the interruption of such program material for commercial material messages has always been somewhat disturbing to the viewing audience, the increase in preemption of time of the program material for advertising is beginning to bring about a strong adverse reaction by the viewing audience and a disillusionment or dissatisfaction with television in general. Very little has been done in the past to eliminate the disturbing aspects of commercial messages in television broadcasting since, to the broadcasting network, such a reduction in commercial message would be accompanied by a loss of advertising revenue. On the other hand, the television viewer with a typical lack of skill in electronic matters can do very little to ameliorate the distasteful aspects of television advertising broadcasting. One such effort in the past, which has met with very little success, has been to use the increased sound volume accompanying a commercial message to trigger a suitable device for shutting off the set or for eliminating the sound. The only recourse left for the typical television viewer is simply to cut off the set or turn down the audio in the set manually or by some type of remote control, such an approach being highly inconvenient and seldom practiced.
Another type of video apparatus found widely in use today is a video tape or cassette recorder (VCR) by means of which television programs may be taped and stored for future use is becoming increasingly more widespread. VCR's are generally provided with a video output jack which permit the monitoring of the video signal which is being recorded or played from the tape. In addition, such VCR's are generally provided with a pause control button by means of which the VCR may be stopped selectively in the event an interruption in the program material being recorded is desired. In addition, such VCR's are generally provided with a terminal for receiving a jack connected to a remote control device which permit the operator of the VCR to interrupt the operation of the VCR when recording or taping of parts of the televised material is not desired. As is well known, the recording of advertising or commercial messages on a VCR tape is highly undesirable since it is only the picture information which the user wishes to be taped. The common practice is for the operator of the VCR to control the pause control on the VCR and when a commercial message appears on the television screen, the VCR is deactivated for the period of the commercial message following which the taping of the picture information is resumed. This is at best a very time consuming and awkward procedure and, of course, requires the presence of an individual during such recording or taping thereby losing the advantage of the automatic operation of the VCR unless the user is willing to accept the recorded program with commercial messages.